Kosztolányi, the son of a headmaster, was from an intellectual family. He published his first volume of poetry in 1907 and joined the circle of the literary magazine Nyugat (“The West”; founded 1908). He won immediate recognition in 1910 with the publication of a cycle of poems, A szegény kisgyermek panaszai (“The Complaints of a Poor Little Child”), a small boy’s subtle and moving impression of his surroundings.

Kosztolányi’s work reveals him to be a sympathetic observer of human frailty with a gentle humour and a penchant for the macabre. He wrote lucid and simple poetry as well as accomplished short stories and novels. Édes Anna (1926; Wonder Maid, 1947), the tale of a servant girl, is perhaps his best novel. He translated poetry from several European languages and also from Chinese and Japanese. In his later years he devoted much effort to the preservation of the purity of the Hungarian language. Dedicated to the principle of art for art’s sake, Kosztolányi was chiefly concerned with artistic form and took little interest in the social questions that absorbed most of the writers of the Nyugat circle.